


Softly Slipping Sideways

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Midnight Verse [7]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, M/M, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thundercracker overhears some gossip, while Starscream has sudden questions in his own existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Softly Slipping Sideways

Thundercracker got back to base in time to see the latest results of trying to fight the Autobots from a losing position. Thrust and Ramjet were sitting together, lazily poking at the sludge of an energon supplement Mixmaster had been producing for them. They looked more morose than usual, but Thundercracker wasn't about to ask where Dirge was.

He didn't want to find out if someone offlined the glitch, especially if it had been Megatron 'cutting his losses' at the end of a battle.

He did need the supplement, though, since Earth fuel alone was not enough to keep him activated. Sure, it let him fly, but it didn't maintain his systems. He went and got a cube of it, grimacing at both the texture and its olfactory rating. As he didn't want it smelling up his quarters, empty as they were, he dropped down on a seat to finish it off in the rec room.

"…those two are bad enough, but add in one like that?"

"What the slag were they thinking? How'd they even get the raw materials? And that pit-spawned engineer's good, but not even he's good enough to power one of them as fully as that!"

Thundercracker wasn't trying to listen in. But neither Thrust not Ramjet had ever been quiet in anything. Pit-spawned engineer meant Wheeljack had created something. From the rest of it, sounded like the Autobots had a new fighter. It was enough to make Thundercracker flinch. They were steadily losing rank and file, had made some replacements, but all too often those replacements were glitched. Just look at the Stunticons, even if Starscream had finally figured out how to manipulate Motormaster's ego enough to make him useful.

"She fights like the gladiator, even if she uses his brother's tactics to get up on us," Ramjet said, voice filled with that knife edge of envy and hate both.

Pits. A femme, Thundercracker realized, quailing a little at the idea, who was following in those rust-bitten, glitch-made twins' tracks? That was all this war needed.

"Tore Dirge up but good and rode him into the side of that mountain." Thrust's tone had that same lust-edged hatred. It was just too much part of their culture to not admire a strong fighter, even if they were the enemy.

"Shielding, weapons, power… full out Frontliner with all the advantages of the femme class. We're going to have to take her down, somehow!" Ramjet said with a thump of his hand on the table.

Thundercracker finished off his supplement, and stood to walk out. It sounded like Prime had found himself a solid weapon for hunting the Seeker class into oblivion. One more nail in the coffin of the war, he decided.

`~`~`~`~`

Starscream let a burst of static filter into his fields in mock-annoyance at Skyfire's exclamation, and the automatic opening of those expansive bay doors. A stronger part of him than he cared to admit wanted to enter those doors, to be able to make Skyfire take the brunt of reentry as punishment for leaving him. However, that would cheat Starscream of the inertial and thermal energies he normally harvested then. 

::I am _not_ that poorly off!:: Letting Skyfire learn his state was a risk, but Starscream was calculating the odds of the effect this would have on the war rapidly. Prime had certain reservations that crippled him as an effective leader. Starscream had no doubt that none of the Autobot spies had reported how low Decepticon energy levels were, but Skyfire? Skyfire would serve well as the messenger.

::Yes you are.:: He executed a small maneuver to make the bay doors more accessible. ::Enter… please.::

::No.:: Starscream let all his disdain for the shuttle pour out in his tone, appreciating the way it made Skyfire's engines stutter, and then that slow close of the bay doors in defeat. ::You made yourself see what shape I am in; live with it and know you're part of the reason!::

::I could not have been what that megalomaniac wanted of me! I do not understand how…::

::This has nothing to do with then!:: Starscream snapped off at his former partner. ::This is about you being one of them as they cut us off from all the resources and leave us on the verge of starving into stasis!::

The silence that followed made Starscream aware of the verge of victory in this psychological attack. Then Skyfire sent to him again.

::How can you be starving, when you live in the middle of a motion-energy turbine, under a radiant power source, such as exists in this system?:: Skyfire's words were slowly spaced, an intonation that was clearly 'what happened to you' in the questioning.

Starscream followed the implications of those words. He considered that for all his own heavy modifications to convert one energy to another to supply his frame with needed resources, he'd never considered the applications of using wave and wind energy nor solar radiation. Such concepts were basic science to him, beneath his notice if it were not for his survival hanging on the ideas.

Yet he'd never researched and applied the principles.

::Why should I have to work that hard?:: was his huffing reply back to Skyfire, but his processors were whirling. Something was not functioning inside his own thought processes, that his own basic survival had failed to make him consider something so elementary. 

::Hardly, Starscream. Such an endeavor wouldn't take you a full orn to complete,:: Skyfire challenged him, adding to the sheer irritation of the situation. Starscream knew that, could already see the diagrams in his processor for distilling new energon from the natural processes of this mudball.

::Oh shut up!:: Starscream gave a flick of his wingtips and kicked his thrusters in… lightly… to find a new vector for his own approach to reentry. He had thinking to do, and the Autobot, as he stressed to his processor, was only going to wind up being a detriment to him if they stayed close to one another.

Skyfire let him go, one more reminder that their partnership had been truly sundered.


End file.
